Australasia May Get Less Nauru

And Ocean Island Phosphate

The Australian Government is perturbed by a suggestion that the United Kingdom might soon exercise its right of using part of the phosphate output of Nauru and Ocean islands.

In the past, although Britain shares with Australia and New Zealand the rights of phosphate ex ploitation on these two islands, Britain has allowed her Pacific partners to use the entire output, though, of course, she has shared in the financial proceeds.

Britain’s supplies have come mainly from North Africa —Morocco especially. It now appears that the price of North African phosphate rock has risen sharply. African phosphate rock is not so high in tricalcic content as the Nauru- Ocean rock; so, unless some import ant alternative fertiliser is de veloped, it does seem highly probable that all phosphate, regardless of grade, will increase in price as sup

plies diminish.

Australia’s worry at the moment is not so much the diminishing sup plies of Nauru-Ocean —estimated by :he British Phosphate Commission ers to last about 50 years, at present rate of exploitation—but the fact ;hat the available facilities on the slands cannot process and deliver 'or export at a higher rate than hey are now doing.

Australia and New Zealand also ointly share in the phosphate min ng rights on Christmas Island, n the Indian Ocean. At present Australia takes the entire output.

Sven with this, plus her share of tfauru-Ocean production, she is still mdersupplied. She will therefore low have to purchase her unsatis ield needs at a higher price from ifrica.

Unless other fertilisers are de eloped—and that is not entirely mprobable in this age—there is ikely to be an increasing interest a some of the many unexploited aw-grade guano deposits scattered hroughout the Islands, and revived nterest in other deposits which Iready have been worked over but iot completely exhausted.

There has, for example, been re ent talk of revived interest in Wal ole Island, east of Noumea; and ome time ago the French Phos hate Company, operating on Maka ?a (north-east of Tahiti) sent an fficial from France to closely ex mine lower-grade deposits on earby Niau.

The British Phosphate Commis 'oners have records of a great umber of other small deposits, from [enderson Island to New Guinea, nd down through the years they ave examined many of them for ossible future use.

During World War 11, with Nauru and Ocean temporarily lost to the Japanese, some were re-examined— Ongea Ndriki in the Lau Group, Fiji, for example.

Should the value of phosphate

rise sufficiently it would probably become payable to re-work some areas of the main phosphate islands.

On Makatea, for instance, where the phosphate overlies jagged pinnacles and crevasses of coral, the phos phate, which is there extracted en tirely by pick and shovel, has only been dug to a convenient depth of six or eight feet in the narrow crevasses. It might later prove pro fitable to drive deeper into the more awkward places.

At present there are indications that the latter half of this century may see a repetition of the latter half of last when, first, American

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interests, then later British, ex ploited many little, now abandoned, guano islands in the central Pacific, t A full history of Pacific guano and phosphate exploitation if ever written, would make fascinating reading—but there may be another chapter yet.

I (Guano is derived from a Peruvian word “huano,” meaning “dung”—in this case, of sea birds. The original supplies came from the almost rain less coasts of Chili, and were rich h nitrogen and phosphates. The first upplies reached Britain in 1840, and n the next 60 years, before the de wsits gave out, revolutionised farm ng. Unlike Chilean guano, Pacific Islands deposits have had a great leal of the nitrogen leached out by ain.)